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A review by professor_x
Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive by Carl Zimmer
4.0
What does it mean to be alive? What constitutes life? In Life's Edge Zimmerman provides different examples that may shed some light on these profound questions. Take the hardy tardigrade for example. These microscopic creatures will enter a near-death hibernation called cryptobiosis, and can stay in this state for very long periods. Add a drop of water and they will spring to life. If a human died of dehydration, you can bet that dumping a bucket of water onto the cadaver won't help reinvigorate it.
Take water from a nearby pond and examine it under a microscope. Looking into the viewer, you may be surprised to see an explosion of minute organisms swimming around. These critters must live such fleeting lives. If the pond dries up, they are wiped from existence. I remember Neil DeGrasse Tyson in Cosmos discussing the evanescent life of microorganisms in a single dew drop. The sun rises, life evaporates into thin air.
I will be forever in gratitude to science, for keeping that brittle flower of child-like wonder and curiosity healthy and well watered. I often will find an ant scurrying along a sidewalk, and I will study it, watching it move to and fro. The realization hits me like a brick every time -- it is alive. The birds flying overhead are alive. The earthworms slithering out of the wet soil are alive. In a way, Earth is alive, with its tectonic plates crashing, volcanoes erupting, hurricanes blowing furiously.
We are surrounded by life. It's important to stop and look once in a while. It is food for the soul.
Take water from a nearby pond and examine it under a microscope. Looking into the viewer, you may be surprised to see an explosion of minute organisms swimming around. These critters must live such fleeting lives. If the pond dries up, they are wiped from existence. I remember Neil DeGrasse Tyson in Cosmos discussing the evanescent life of microorganisms in a single dew drop. The sun rises, life evaporates into thin air.
I will be forever in gratitude to science, for keeping that brittle flower of child-like wonder and curiosity healthy and well watered. I often will find an ant scurrying along a sidewalk, and I will study it, watching it move to and fro. The realization hits me like a brick every time -- it is alive. The birds flying overhead are alive. The earthworms slithering out of the wet soil are alive. In a way, Earth is alive, with its tectonic plates crashing, volcanoes erupting, hurricanes blowing furiously.
We are surrounded by life. It's important to stop and look once in a while. It is food for the soul.